


Lessons in Understanding

by frutescence



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Minor Mai/Zuko, Past Child Abuse, Zuko (Avatar) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko has anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25560613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frutescence/pseuds/frutescence
Summary: Zuko learns many lessons over the years that culminate in his decision to join the Avatar, end the war, and remove his father from the throne.(Because you don’t just decide to forsake your birthright, your nation, and your family overnight.)
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 311
Collections: A:tla





	Lessons in Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: attempted drowning, canon-typical child abuse, (canon) gaslighting behavior, suicidal ideation/intrusive thoughts, mentioned death of an infant. all are very minor mentions but all warnings are explained by section in the endnote

xxv.

When Zuko is 8 and Azula is 6, she tries to drown him.

She pushes him down with the pull of the tide in the waves of Ember Island. Azula stands on his chest while he’s underwater so he’s pinned to the sand.

Zuko tries to shove her off but she only digs her heels deeper into his chest. A seashell is digging into his back. His vision goes fuzzy around the edges as his lungs start to scream in protest.

He’s staring up at the hazy blue surface. Agni’s light is refracted through it and Zuko thinks it’s the last thing he’ll ever see.

After some time _(too much time),_ she gets off of him and he pushes to the surface, gasping for air. His mother is yelling at Azula, but Zuko can’t hear her over the sound of the water he’s spitting out. Uncle’s eyebrows are furrowed and Lu Ten looks uncomfortable from where they’re sitting next to each other on the beach.

His father smirks and says nothing. Zuko can’t help but wonder why.

xxiv.

Zuko is nearly 11 when his father yells that he was lucky to be born at all.

Azula is saying something about their firebending instructor, a skinny man in his early 30s named Kunyo, and complaining that he’s a dummy. She claims he doesn’t know anything about firebending because he continually refuses her requests to move on to more advanced kata.

Zuko interjects to defend Kunyo because Kunyo is his teacher, too and Zuko thinks his instructor is right.

The second after he speaks, his father slams his fist on the table making all the dishes rattle and says _silence, you do not know more, you are lucky to even be here._

Zuko can’t breathe. His mother looks down at her hands. Azula is smirking on his left.

Father is angry as he repeats himself. “You do not understand, _boy_ , that _I_ wanted to discard you when you were born. You were weak, you had no spark, there was _nothing_. I wanted to leave you to the Spirits, but your mother and the Fire Sages refused. You are here on a _technicality_. Your _sister,”_ he nearly spits as he points at her. “Was born lucky. She bent fire _long_ before you, despite your age difference. Her progress is already comparable to that of someone twice her age. Prince of the Fire Nation, and what do you have to show for it? How could you have _anything_ of comparative importance to say in regards to firebending?” Father sits back in his seat. “ _Master_ Kunyo will be sent to the colonies,” He says mockingly like Kunyo is not deserving of his title simply because Azula doesn’t like him. Something uneasy twists in Zuko’s stomach and suddenly he’s on the verge of hyperventilating.

Zuko focuses on every breathing technique he’s ever practiced as he desperately tries to slow his speeding heartbeat. He feels tears prick the back of his eyes and he tries to swallow them down.

He excuses himself a few minutes later and goes back to his room. He falls into his bed and sobs until he finally falls asleep, exhausted.

His dreams are not pleasant ones.

xxiii.

When he is 11, Lu Ten dies, his grandfather dies, and his mother vanishes in the middle of the night.

Zuko is old enough to understand that death is the end of everyone’s journey. Grandfather was nearly a century old. His time had merely come, as it does for everyone eventually.

He understands Lu Ten is gone and never coming back, and he hears whispers in the palace. One day, he hears a noblewoman say _what greater honor is there than to die in battle?_

Zuko does not understand why his mother left, and why everyone would rather pretend she never existed at all.

Zuko thinks about the other people who have been lost to the war over the past century. His stomach churns when his history tutor talks about the _glory_ of the war, and how this is the Fire Nation sharing its greatness with the world. 

The war cut his family in half overnight. His uncle still hasn’t returned from Ba Sing Se. People whisper that he may never come back. How is that glory?

The little warmth that had remained in the palace after Uncle and Lu Ten’s departure vanishes with his mother.

Zuko had always been educated at home, and as such, he’s never quite had any friends. His mother was more than happy to let him trail after him, and bring him along to meetings and councils and conversations over tea.

The hallways had felt brighter when he would turn a corner and see her.

Now the billowing floor-length curtains threaten to suffocate him.

xxii.

Overnight, Zuko becomes the presumptive heir to the throne and inherits all of the expectations that come with the title.

He suddenly had grueling training practices from sunrise to sunset and lessons with his tutors where they attempted to teach him everything they could to presumably prepare him to one day lead the Fire Nation. He had to learn every piece of etiquette befitting of the future Fire Lord, and he had to learn _fast_ because he was already 11 years behind, and the war was only gaining momentum.

When his lessons ramped up, so did the punishments for bad performance.

His arms, legs, and back were constantly covered with bruises, scratches, and tiny burns from when he wasn’t doing _enough._ A burned thumbprint behind his ear. A long scratch on his left thigh from a knife. A handprint around his left bicep. Endless bruises from being struck for not focusing enough.

A month after Zuko’s father had caught him practicing the dao and made it clear that Zuko wasn’t to practice them again ( _“if you need to rely on something other than bending you are weak”),_ he catches Zuko practicing with the swords again.

His father breaks Zuko’s left arm in three places and leaves him lying on the floor of the practice yard. Zuko is left curled up on his side, unconscious from the pain. His father does not look back.

Zuko rouses sometime later in the palace healer’s room, his arm in a splint. When the healer asked him what happened, Zuko said _my father told me to stop practicing with my swords and I didn’t_ and there’s something unreadable in the healer’s expression when he looks away.

Zuko doesn’t touch his swords again for a long time.

xxi.

He’ll tell himself later that he didn’t think his father would do it, but he thinks maybe a part of him knew.

Knew what his father was capable of, knew the lengths he would go to _prove_ his rule, to make an example of anyone that got in the way.

The healer on the ship, a man named Ryu, tells him a week after the Agni Kai that he’s lucky he’s not dead, that he was able to cut the burned flesh away without too much complication and that he must have been spared by Agni herself because an injury like that should have killed him within the first 48 hours.

His uncle hums and says, “Maybe it is indicative of a sort of greater purpose, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko knows Healer Ryu and Uncle are trying to be nice because he is 13 and he is ugly and blind and banished. Their optimism infuriates him.

But Zuko is so quietly glad to have Uncle accompanying him and is desperate for the man to stay. He can’t do anything to risk that right now.

Zuko won’t tell Uncle he spends his nights staring at his ceiling and wishing his father or the infection had killed him.

xx.

He is standing in the Western Air Temple after a dizzy, terrible week of travel and he is surrounded by bodies.

The force of death takes him by surprise. He understands it, objectively. Learned about the Air Army Battle from his tutors.

That doesn’t stop Zuko from throwing up over the side of the Western Air Temple. His forehead is damp with sweat and his eyes are glazed over as the steadily growing infection in – in _whatever’s_ left threatens to make him pass out _._

Spirits, some of these bodies are _infants_.

His uncle is suddenly next to him, rubbing his back gently and saying something Zuko can’t hear.

“We have to- “Zuko chokes out, pushing down the urge to vomit again. His vision's been messed up since the Agni Kai and it's completely thrown off his balance, and the growing infection in his wound is making his head spin dangerously. He tries to focus through it. “I don’t – I don’t know what the Air Nation did for the dead, but we can’t just leave them here. We have to do _something.”_

Iroh takes a step back and nods, folding his hands into his sleeves. “Whatever you wish, Prince Zuko.”

They burn the bodies of the hundreds of Fire Nation Soldiers and _thousands_ (spirits, _thousands,_ and _his ancestors did this)_ bodies of the Air Nomads _._

Zuko barely manages to stumble back to the ship. He’s a hundred feet from his room when the infection spikes and Zuko faints from the force of it.

Zuko, head pounding with fever, tries to comprehend what he just saw at the temple.

He was taught that the Air Nomads had a massive army that had staged unprecedented attacks against the Fire Nation. He had been told that Sozin had wiped out the Air Temples in retribution.

The bodies of the Air Nomads, merely bones but still clad in their orange robes nearly a century later, are not those of an army. Mostly, they’re _children._ Children are defenseless.

One of the skeletons had been so tiny its skull could fit in the palm of Zuko’s hand. How is that a _battle?_

Zuko thinks it’s dishonorable to murder innocent children, for any reason.

Since Sozin killed the Air Nomads, he has dishonorably killed innocent people. The Air Nomads didn’t have an army. They didn’t fight back. This was not battle. This was genocide.

If Sozin was dishonorable in the name of starting the war in the name of sharing the Fire Nation’s greatness and civilization with the world through war, then the war is wrong.

If the war is wrong, then the Fire Lord is wrong in supporting it.

If the Fire Lord is wrong for supporting the war, then the Fire Lord is wrong.

(That last thought keeps Zuko up at night when the phantom pain burns behind his left eye and inevitable nightmares keep him from sleeping. It reminds him of something his father told him once.)

xix.

The infection nearly kills him. It takes the hearing in his left ear.

Whatever was left of the skin around his eye starting to swell horrifically, turning a disgusting purple that Zuko was only allowed to catch glances of during the times his uncle came in to switch the bandages.

Zuko had horrific panic attacks every time anyone else made a motion towards his face. So Iroh did it every time.

Healer Ryu says a lot of words Zuko doesn’t understand about _bacteria in the blood_ and _rising temperature_ and eventually, Zuko just zones out.

The infection rages for a week straight. Every muscle in his body aches. Zuko sweats through his clothes. For the first few days, he tries to change out of them, but his limbs are heavy and he gives up.

On the third day, he starts hallucinating.

His mother. Azula. Lu Ten, before the war.

They start nostalgic but then turn to horror. His mother’s body, floating lifelessly in the pond where they used to feed the turtleducks. Lu Ten’s body, destroyed by earthbenders. Kunyo, who had been killed a month after being sent to the colonies.

He screams and then thinks the screams give these hallucinations power and wills himself into silence.

He stares at the body of his dead cousin lying next to him and thinks _Lu Ten, forgive me, I’m sorry, I tried my hardest-_

He starts seizing on the sixth day, and Ryu tells Iroh to prepare for the worst.

Against all odds, Zuko wakes up.

It is not the last time the wound gets infected, and Zuko begs Agni herself to let him die over and over again.

Agni, if she even exists, does not hear his calls.

xviii.

He is 13 when he sees _it_ for the first time, sees the monstrosity his face has become, and sobs so hard he can’t breathe.

It encompasses nearly a third of his face, stretching from his eye back beyond his head. The scar is a mottled deep red. Healer Ryu says his eyebrow will never grow back, and he’ll likely never regain full vision in his left eye or hearing in his left ear.

He also says the scar may fad the littlest bit with time, but it will always be there.

The scar is, unmistakably, his father’s handprint.

Zuko thanks the healer before heading back to his quarters, when he finally lets the anxiety that’s been building his chest for weeks burst. Zuko feels dizzy and his entire body is consumed by blinding heat. Sobs break their way out of his chest like a dam that’s finally broken, and the physical effort of crying makes his chest feel tight and his burned eye sting.

For some reason Zuko can’t quite comprehend, his uncle is there the whole time, rubbing a hand soothingly on his back and whispering words Zuko can’t hear into his left ear.

xvii.

He spends a lot of time on the ship’s deck. He likes to go there at night when he’s too tired to sleep and too afraid of what he’ll see when he closes his eyes.

The sun is still hours from rising. The sea salt makes his burned eye sting horrifically in a way that threatens to make his other eye tear up, but Zuko is in charge of this ship, and he will not show weakness.

The burn was hideous. He still couldn’t bear to look at it. Last week, he smashed the mirror that had been in his quarters and had the still-healing scrapes on his left hand to prove it because he couldn’t bear to look at himself anymore.

They’ve searched the Air Temples and found nothing but bodies. Zuko can’t figure out how the Avatar has survived all the time when all they’ve found at the Air Temples is death and destruction.

Because the Avatar _has_ to be out there. Zuko can’t consider the alternative.

Zuko spends his days pours over scrolls, texts, anything he could find that could potentially aid his search for the Avatar. The Fire Sages say that the last airbender evaded Sozin’s genocide, but that doesn’t explain how they know or where the Avatar could be hiding.

Azulon has historically claimed he raided the Southern Water Tribe and executed the waterbenders to kill the next Avatar. Why would he have done that if he believed the old Avatar was still out there?

The texts on Air Nomad histories talk about how the Air Nomads _had_ to know who the Avatar was. Either they refused to give him up and Sozin killed all of them as collateral and the Avatar was reborn, or the Avatar cowered and ran away.

But neither option makes sense. Sozin spent over a decade after Avatar Roku’s death building a propaganda campaign that portrayed the air nomads as _weak_ , as _monsters._ Sozin massacred an entire nation and still failed to find the child.

Zuko stands on the edge of the ship and wonders what it means to be descended from men that take pride in murdering innocent people in the name of their own alleged glory.

He’s starting to think that maybe Sozin and Azulon were wrong.

xvi.

Zuko is 16 when a brilliant beam of light shoots out of an otherwise deserted part of the Southern Ocean and something dangerously close to relief floods his body as he thinks to himself _finally_.

But capturing the Avatar isn’t as easy as Zuko had thought it would be, and the Avatar’s return creates a great deal of strain between Zuko and his crew.

Zuko tried to understand their frustrations, he did, but it was different now. The crewmembers were all dishonorably discharged from the armed forces for various reasons over the years. Most of them had served under Uncle in Ba Sing Se. Sure, they were barely welcome at home, but they weren’t _banished_.

Their honor didn’t hinge on the Avatar’s capture. And now that the Avatar had returned, they weren’t just mindlessly sailing anymore.

During their nearly three years at sea, Zuko had had many (mostly unpleasant) encounters with various Naval commanders and captains. Just as Zuko wasn’t welcomed in Fire Nation waters, he also wasn’t welcomed with most of the Navy officers, either. After all, they had spent years vying for their shot at a ship, and here Zuko was, banished, and in their minds, sailing the world on some sort of vacation.

After three years, Zuko had _thought_ that he and the crew all shared a common hatred of Commander Zhao.

Zhao was different than the other officers. Whereas most Navy officers saw Zuko and looked at him with something like confusion, occasionally pity, or even disdain, Zhao was the only one who ever looked at him with _outright fury._

Time and time again, Uncle had begged him to be polite. _Try to avoid conflict, nephew. Please._

But Zhao is walking Zuko through some idiot plan of his to capture Ba Sing Se. Zhao’s wasting his time. It won’t work. The entire plan hinges on the Earth King just _handing_ them the city. Zuko had been to enough Earth Kingdom ports, had enough people spit on them, had enough merchants upcharge them grotesquely to think that Ba Sing Se, the city even Uncle couldn’t capture, would give up.

Plus, if _Uncle_ , the most competent general the Fire Nation has ever seen, couldn’t break through the wall, then Zhao has no chance.

“If my father thinks the rest of the world will follow him willingly, then he is a fool,” Zuko spits out without thinking.

Uncle unceremoniously tipped over some of Zhao's show weapons in an obvious attempt to keep the situation from escalating. 

Zuko moves towards the exit but is blocked by two soldiers. A third comes in and says, “Commander Zhao, we interrogated the crew as you instructed. They confirmed Prince Zuko had the Avatar in custody.”

Zuko wants to punch a wall. _Some crew._

Zhao says something _stupid_ about his scar and his _father_ , and Zuko’s patience is fraught at the best of times. Maybe that’s how he ends up fighting an Agni Kai against an experienced Commander when he was never any good at firebending and had to relearn firebending from scratch a year into his banishment.

Uncle is alarmed at this turn of events. Probably because he’s watched Zuko constantly fail over the past two years.

The worst-case (and most probable outcome) of the Agni Kai is that Zhao kills him. No one will lose sleep over that. The legal age to participate in an Agni Kai is technically 20, but that didn’t stop his father and it doesn’t stop Zhao.

Zuko actually _wins_ the Agni Kai and wishes he was less surprised.

Zuko doesn’t burn Zhao, because Zuko isn’t _him._ Zhao sees this as a weakness and tries to goad him into it. Zuko is _furious_. But he knows what Uncle would want him to do, and so Zuko walks away.

Zhao goes for a cheap shot, tries to shoot flames at Zuko when his back is turned, but before Zuko can even react Uncle is there, grabbing Zhao’s foot and pushing him on the ground.

Zuko moves to continue the fight, but his uncle throws up an arm to stop him. “Do not taint your victory.” Iroh is furious in the quiet way he often is, but it isn’t directed at Zuko. Zuko can’t look at either of them. “So this is how the great Commander Zhao acts in defeat? Disgraceful. Even in exile, my nephew is more honorable than you. Thanks for the tea.”

Zuko’s head shoots up in surprise at that. Why is Uncle defending him? His uncle turns towards the gate and starts walking. He knows that Zuko will follow.

He doesn’t understand why his uncle would defend him, and he can’t help but ask softly, “Did you really mean that, Uncle?”

Uncle shoots him a smile. There’s something unreadable there. “Of course. I told you ginseng is my favorite.”

xv.

Zuko is no fool. He knows there are whispers about him.

He’s heard them himself over the years despite his uncle’s harried attempts to shield him from the worst of them.

He is a sailor’s tale. They wander from port to port, stocking up on supplies and information, tracking movements on anything even remotely relating to the Avatar or the Air Nomads.

A boy held down by his father, his face burned by the heated flame in his hand. Flame hot enough and pressed down long enough to burn even a firebender. The Fire Lord burning half his son’s face off in front of an audience of hundreds.

When his uncle encourages him to abandon his pursuit of the Avatar in the name of the crew’s safety, he fights with Jee because he’s angry and it’s _something_. Zuko doesn’t care about the crew, these men and women who are so quick to throw everything away the second Zhao asks them for information.

Jee claims that Zuko knows _nothing_ about respect. Like Zuko didn’t lose everything in the name of something as temperamental as _respect._

He doesn’t tell people about _it._ If he’s heard the story at ports, despite his uncle’s best efforts, then he knows the crew must have as well. They don’t ask and he doesn’t offer.

Still, later that night Zuko wishes he was more surprised to hear his uncle’s voice drifting out of the engine room, telling an achingly familiar tale about a war meeting that ends very, very badly.

If anything, Zuko’s surprised Uncle waited this long.

He wonders about the story they heard back in a northern Earth Kingdom port not far from the Northern Air Temple, about how his father continued to hold him down and sear his face off long after Zuko had passed out.

Rumor says Father just left him there in the middle of the dais and didn’t look back as he walked away.

They say that Zuko should have died, that Father had intended to kill him, but that he was saved by the grace of the spirits.

Zuko knows that every one of thousands of soldiers in the 41st division died two weeks after that fateful Agni Kai. He burned for them and still couldn’t save them. He wonders where the spirits were then.

Lightning strikes the ship and Zuko shoots outside. The helmsman is holding onto the crow’s nest with one hand, precariously close to falling. Zuko wastes no time sprinting up the ladder, Jee not far behind.

Just as they’re closing in, the helmsman’s grip slips on the slick metal. He goes down with a scream.

Zuko, relying on the muscle memory of hours spent practicing to compensate for his lack of depth perception after _it_ , manages to snag him by the hand, a little lower than he had aimed for but still miraculously _there_.

Zuko’s heart is pumping with adrenalin. It’s still raining, and Zuko is soaked to the skin.

In front of them, the Avatar’s bison bursts through the surface not 100 feet from them. Zuko swallows back his shock.

Jee asks what he wants to do, and it unsettles Zuko in a way he can’t quite pinpoint. Zuko swallows. “Let him go. We need to get the ship to safety.”

“Then we must head directly into the eye of the storm,” Uncle says, his expression unreadable. Zuko looks over and sees Uncle is watching him.

“Uncle, I’m sorry,” Zuko says, eyes closed. They’re in the eye of the storm now, and the rain has stopped. He doesn’t specify all the things he’s apologizing for. He hopes his uncle understands.

“Your apology is accepted, nephew,” Uncle says. Zuko chances a look at him. Uncle is watching some of the soldiers do something towards the helm of the ship.

Zuko follows his gaze. He pointedly doesn’t think about the last time he apologized to a family member, and how differently that ended.

xiv.

Zuko only has the mask because Uncle bought it for him.

They had been at one of their first port stops at a coastal town on the Mo Ce Se sea. The port was close enough to the Fire Nation that they sold Fire Nation wares, but not close enough to the Fire Nation that Zuko would be recognized and arrested on sight for violating the terms of his banishment.

Uncle had dragged him down the line of stalls for fun, which he frequently claimed his 13-year-old nephew desperately needed more of. They had already purchased all the necessary supplies for the ship, and Zuko couldn’t fathom why they were wasting any more of their time.

Uncle was at a stall examine an ornate blue teapot when Zuko spotted something familiar across the way.

“Uncle, I’ll be over here,” He said, stalking across to a stall selling theater masks. 

“Interested in the arts, are ye?” The old merchant had asked. He smiled at Zuko, revealing more than a few missing teeth.

“Just looking,” Zuko had replied. The shopkeeper made a vague gesture for Zuko to continue. Zuko picked up the mask that had caught his eye and turned the familiar blue and white mask over. It was the same familiar smile, the familiar teeth and black ribbon as the mask he had seen countless times before.

“That there’s a noh mask,” The merchant said as if Zuko didn’t know. “Made of the finest Fire Nation cypress wood and crushed seashells. Of course, noh’s gone a bit out of style more recently, but elements of it are still used in some of the popular plays today. I can sell it to you for a bit of a discount if you’d like. You seem like a man of the arts.”

Zuko made a noncommittal sound as he ran the fingers of his left hand along the front of the mask. It was identical to the one his mother had had hanging on the vanity in her room. “It just … reminds me of somebody.” He had gone to look for the mask after his mother had left, but her room had already been cleaned out. 

“Find anything interesting, Prince Zuko?” Zuko jumped as Uncle suddenly appeared at his left elbow. He hadn’t heard him coming. 

Zuko set the mask back down. “No, Uncle. Are you done looking at teapots yet?”

Soon after, the two made their way back to the ship, and there was no more talk beyond where they would go next on their search for the Avatar. 

The next night, the blue and white mask was laying on his bed when Zuko returned to his quarters after meeting with Lieutenant Jee.

There was no note, nothing to mark where (or rather who) the mask had come from. There didn’t need to be.

The next time Zuko saw his uncle, he asked Uncle if he wanted to play a game of Pai Sho.

For most of the next two years, the mask sits in a drawer of Zuko’s room, untouched.

Zuko scours scrolls, plots courses with Jee, tries to bend fire without having a panic attack and takes to practicing his swords with one of the men from Engineering named Makoto who, at a decade older, is the closest person in age to Zuko on the ship.

Then, of course, the Avatar returns. And escapes. And evades. Until Zhao closes in on him.

Zuko stands on the deck, practicing his firebending in an attempt to push down the panic rising in his chest.

Zhao has more resources than Zuko. More money. More men. More supplies. With Zhao now also hunting the Avatar full-time, Zuko doesn’t stand a chance.

The sun is setting, casting a hazy orange glow over the sea’s horizon.

Zuko hates it.

“Is everything okay?” His uncle asks from behind him. They both know Zuko’s never really okay, especially now. Zuko’s standing at the boat’s edge, leaning on the railing. “You can still capture the Avatar before Zhao.”

Zuko turns around abruptly. “ _How,_ Uncle? With Zhao’s resources, it’s just a matter of time before he captures the Avatar.” Zuko turned back to face the sea, watching how the light refracted off of the water. “My honor. My throne. My country. I’m about to lose everything.” 

His uncle says nothing. They both know Zuko’s right.

Word reaches the ship an hour later that Zhao has captured and imprisoned the Avatar. Zuko stalks off towards his quarters, trying to figure out if there’s anything he could do to salvage this situation.

On the way, Zuko passes two crewmembers talking with the door propped open. “Doesn’t matter if Zhao has the Avatar,” He overheard Fan, one of the operations staff, say. “Kid’s a slippery bastard. I’ll be shocked if he’s still there in six hours.”

That gives Zuko an idea.

He slips into his room, pulling out the black bodysuit he acquired doing _something_ he can’t remember in Tanjin last year. He’ll take one of the cutter ships. Fan is the one who oversees them, and she ultimately won’t care that he took one without clearing it with her first. He pulls his swords off the wall.

He’s on his way out when he pauses. Even with the suit, he’s still easily recognizable.

And then he remembers the mask.

Zuko pulls it out of the drawer and slips out of his room.

Breaking into the Pohuai Stronghold was easy. Breaking the Avatar out of Zhao’s prison was easy.

Breaking _out_ of a secure Fire Nation base? Surprisingly difficult.

Zuko doesn’t see the arrow until it’s already slamming into his face.

When he comes to, he’s lying in a pile of leaves, staring up at trees. He can feel the sun. Early morning. His head hurts.

He tries to get his eyes to focus and he sees a blob of orange and yellow sitting on a tree root not too far from him.

The Avatar.

He looks … sad.

“You know what the worst part of being born over a hundred years ago is?” The Avatar asks. He isn’t looking at Zuko. “I miss all the friends I used to hang out with. Before the war started, I used to always visit my friend Kuzon. The two of us, we’d get in and out of so much trouble together.” The fondness in the Avatar’s voice was clear. “He was one of the best friends I ever had, and he was from the Fire Nation, just like you. If we knew each other back then, do you think we could have been friends, too?”

Zuko thinks _maybe_ before he can stop himself and then quickly thinks _this is treason_.

He shoots a fireball at the Avatar, who flits away through the treetops.

Zuko sighs.

Zuko slinks his way back to the ship, dragging his swords behind him. He has a massive migraine forming behind his eye that makes his head feel like it’s splitting in half. The mask is flipped over where it is tied to hang loosely around his neck. He throws his armor on top of the black suit, too tired to bother undressing even though the fit under his armor is tight. Zuko’s headache only intensifies as he loads the cutter boat back onto the ship.

He turns off all of the lights in his room and sits in the dark.

Once he realizes that everyone the Avatar had known was now dead, he can’t stop thinking about it.

He imagines it for himself. To be 12 ( _before he was burned)_ , to be in some kind of stasis Zuko still didn’t understand for a century, only to emerge and learn about the gruesome genocide of your people. To learn that the friends you once relied on had had weddings and children and funerals in the time you were gone. To learn that their lives and the world had gone on and to emerge at the end of a century of war.

Zuko knows that in the Avatar’s situation, he’d be furious, would try to burn the world to the ground. He’s read every scroll there is about the Avatar and Air Nomad culture. He knows the Avatar is more than capable of exacting his revenge.

Had their positions today been reversed, Zuko would have left the Avatar for dead.

But the Avatar had not only saved Zuko but had offered him _friendship._

And Zuko could not figure out why.

xiii.

Zuko may be deaf and pretty much blind on his left side, but he’s spent nearly three years learning to compensate with his right. He _knows_ he heard someone else sneaking around on the ship.

The crew was gone. Uncle didn’t sneak. If someone else was on the ship, it couldn’t be good.

Zuko sees an eerily familiar green bird, and the recognition clicks into place the same moment the explosives go off.

With a gasp, Zuko wills the flames closest to him to go over his head. The bridge is on fire around him, he’s sweating and the only thought running through his head is _get off the ship._

Thank the Spirits Uncle had gone on a walk.

The ship gives a great big splutter as the ancient metal twists and melts in another round of explosions.

The ship is going down, and Zuko knows he has mere seconds to get off the boat before he goes down with it.

If he’s going to die, he’ll die fighting.

Some flying debris hits him, and his head starts pinning dangerously. He sits up enough to see the explosion has blasted the metal side door of the bridge clean off.

It’s a straight shot from his current position to the edge of the ship. It’s a much longer way down to the water.

Zuko doesn’t allow himself to think. He’s running out of time. With a level of conviction he didn’t know he had, he pushes his aching body up from the floor and sprints towards the outside as the ship is consumed by the fire behind him.

Zuko thrusts his body forward and leaps over the railing.

He hits _something_ with his ribs on the way down.

The water hits him like a bucket of ice.

He’s underwater. His brain and body feel fuzzy.

He has a distant memory of Azula trying to drown him on Ember Island all those years ago, and for a moment, he thinks how _easy_ it would be to open his mouth and let the water take him.

He pushes himself to the surface.

He gasps for air. He sees that the dock isn’t too far – thank spirits he had jumped off the right side of the boat and didn’t have to swim around. He wouldn’t have made it.

His whole body hurts. There’s flaming debris around him, and he barely manages the swim.

He pulls himself out of the water and onto the dock. He rolls over and immediately starts hacking up water.

There’s a hand on his shoulder. He jerks his head up sharply.

It’s Uncle. He’s saying something Zuko can’t hear, but Uncle’s crying and then suddenly Zuko is crying too.

He doesn’t know who would try to kill him on his own ship.

He doesn’t know why Uncle would cry if they had.

xii.

Zhao doesn’t take his hand during the Siege of the North.

Zuko lays down on a piece of driftwood and wishes the sea would swallow him whole.

xi.

Three years of banishment.

His sister is there until she’s not. She’s grown taller and colder in the years they’ve been apart. Her fire is blue, now. And she’s learned to channel lightning.

She always did take after their father.

Zuko and Uncle cut their distinctly Fire Nation hair. Azula or the army would do worse if they found them. Zuko is surprised to realize he feels better without the constant pressure headache from the phoenix tail, but maybe it was just that his concussion from the ship’s explosion and the invasion at the North Pole had finally healed.

They decide that they’d have better luck heading inland, away from the shore. The Fire Nation’s Navy was an unquestionable powerhouse, but the Fire Nation could not lay claim to the Earth Kingdom’s interior.

According to Uncle, at least. But Zuko supposes that Uncle was more intimately familiar with the military’s operations than most people.

All in all, Zuko left his uncle alone for half an hour to go fishing.

Thirty. Minutes.

Zuko returns and his uncle is covered in hives. He pushes down the panic that threatens to climb up his throat because his uncle is going to be _fine._

Zuko had seen what he thought were the markings of a trail while he was fishing. They head that way.

Uncle tries to make small talk, but either he figures out Zuko is too stressed to focus on it or he can’t talk over the hives that are beginning to encroach uncomfortably on more and more of his body.

After nearly an hour of walking, they come to a village and Iroh stops someone long enough to get directions to the local hospital.

The hospital is a single room. The girl that helps Iroh – Song, Zuko’s brain supplies - is nice. She scolds Uncle gently for trying to make tea out of the white jade. She flicks his hand away when he tries to scratch at the rash when he thinks she’s not looking.

Song invites the two of them to dinner. Zuko is inclined to say no – they really should be moving on, and Zuko is still far too worried about being recognized.

But then Song mentions roast duck, and Zuko knows he’s already lost.

Song’s mother is a kind-looking woman named Bada. They eat outside in an open-walled dining room that, weirdly enough, reminds Zuko of the interior gardens of the palace that he used to sit in with his mother.

Bada sets the food gently down on the table before taking a seat next to Song. “My daughter tells me you’re both refugees. We were once refugees ourselves.”

“When I was a little girl, the Fire Nation raided our farming village. All three men were taken away. That was the last time I saw my father.”

Zuko takes a sip of his tea, wondering if Song expects him to say something in return. “I haven’t seen my father in many years.”

“Oh, is he fighting in the war?” Song asks, innocently enough. Zuko forcibly reminds himself that that’s typical for this area of the Earth Kingdom. He can feel his skin crawling and the familiar tension headache starts to build behind his left eye.

“Yeah,” He says, because he can’t say _my father_ is _the war_ and he can’t say _I was born to carry it on._

After dinner, he excuses himself to sit outside. Now that they’re further south, it’s a bit warmer out. He breathes in the nighttime air.

The door slides open. He doesn’t look up.

“Can I join you?” Song asks and doesn’t wait for a response before sitting down on his left. Zuko has to bite down the urge to instinctively tilt his head towards her to hear better. “I know what you’ve been through. We’ve all been through it.” She stares at him for a second. He can’t see, but he knows what she’s looking at. What everyone always looks at. “The Fire Nation has hurt you.”

Song reaches out to touch _it_. The only other person who ever has is Uncle, and Zuko can’t do this right now. Not with Song sitting here, thinking they are the same.

“it’s okay,” Song says. She doesn’t sound angry. “They’ve hurt me, too.”

Song pulled up the skirt of her hanbok to reveal a long, twisting burn scar on her leg. It didn’t look as deep as the one on Zuko’s eye. It was deep, and the skin was mottled purple with age.

_Is this what the Fire Nation is doing to the world? Burning innocent children?_

For a second, Zuko can’t breathe. Song is trying to relate to him when they have nothing in common.

He didn’t get his scar fleeing his home or fighting in a war. He got it from his _father._ He got it because of his _cowardice_. Because his father wanted to teach him a lesson. He wasn’t doing anything revolutionary or standing up to some oppressor. He was just being disrespectful.

Song and Zuko’s scars could never be the same because Zuko deserved his.

The war makes less and less sense to him with each passing day.

He wonders if it’s treason to think that. He wonders why he would care so much if it was. Why does he care so much about what his father thinks when he wrote him every month for all three years of his banishment and never received a single reply? Why does he care so much when his father is the one who banished him in the first place?

Zuko steals their ostrich horse. He knows Uncle is disappointed.

Weirdly, it comforts Zuko. He can come out here and pretend to be someone else, pretend to be a refugee like Song and her mother, but it can’t detract from who he is.

And Zuko knows, with a steadying, unquestionable certainty, that he is not a good person.

x.

Leaving Iroh is one of the hardest things Zuko’s ever done. But he knows he’s right. There’s nothing to be gained by them traveling together anymore.

Zuko’s never spent any extended amount of time alone – in the palace, he was always carefully watched, and since his banishment, he was almost always with Uncle.

But – if this is his life now, he needs to go out and find his destiny by himself.

He ends up in a village called Yeopo in the plains of the southern Earth Kingdom. He doesn’t have a lot of money, but starvation is making him dizzy.

Zuko can instantly tell that the town is poor and has been completely ravaged. The people there are wearing torn and dirty clothes. There’s the faint smell of illness in the air. Zuko doesn’t intend to linger, just wants to spend the last of his money and carry on.

And then he meets the Earth Kingdom soldiers. The earthbenders who are cruel to the people of this town in the name of “keeping order”. The ones terrorizing the village that are meant to be the ones protecting it.

Zuko follows the boy, Lee, back home. He may be fine starving to death on the dried-out plains of the Earth Kingdom, but he can’t do that to Song’s ostrich horse. Not when he’s already let so many people down.

Gansu and Sela are kind to him and seemingly unsurprised that their son had brought Zuko home with him.

Lee’s older brother is away fighting in the war. Zuko thinks distantly of Lu Ten, and how he left and never returned.

Lee asks about his scar and Zuko accidentally slams the hammer down on his thumb and has to bite down a yelp. He thinks of his mother. He wonders what she would make of him now.

He gives Lee the knife and leaves.

He’s almost on his way out of the city when Sela runs up to him. She’s crying as she telling Zuko about how Lee pulled a knife on the Earth Kingdom soldiers, and Zuko knows if Lee goes to war, that’s it, he’s dead, and since he’s the one that gave him the knife, that puts Lee’s death on his hands.

It’s unacceptable. He can’t hurt anyone else.

He doesn’t remember the fight. He doesn’t remember how he got on the ground. All he remembers is coming to and seeing a hand flying towards his face and instinct kicking in.

When the soldier stops moving on the ground, Zuko pulls the dagger from his hip. Sela and Lee want nothing to do with him.

“I hate you!” Lee screams and Zuko thinks _me too._

All the villagers are eyeing Zuko nervously, and he knows he has to leave before they decide he is a bigger threat than the Earth Kingdom soldiers.

So Zuko gets on the ostrich horse and heads east.

His tutors used to praise the war. They would justify the war by saying it was the Fire Nation sharing its civilization and technology and manifested greatness with the rest of the world.

Zuko thinks of Lee and feels sick. _This isn’t greatness._

It was evident that Yeopo was once prosperous, but was devastated by the war. These people were sick and starving, with no help or resources to come. When Zuko was still on the ship, he had heard about the Earth Kingdom, the only real threat to the Fire Nation, running low on supplies. He had heard about how the Earth Kingdom had left the villages to fend for themselves. At the time, Zuko had thought it was despicable.

But the Fire Nation also wasn’t helping the conquered villages. It was destroying them.

The world is terrified of the Fire Nation, of firebenders like Zuko. He doesn’t understand how anyone could claim the Fire Nation was doing anything _great_ when the Fire Nation has so clearly created a world of terror and hate.

Zuko doesn’t think the war is as black and white as it once seemed. It gives him a headache.

The next time someone asks him his name, he responds “Lee,” without hesitating, and thinks of a little Earth Kingdom boy.

ix.

Zuko doesn’t know why he follows the bison and Azula.

He doesn’t know if he seriously thinks that his father would restore his honor if he managed to beat the Avatar _and_ Azula, or if he’s just desperate to try because it’s his only chance of going home.

So he follows the Avatar to an abandoned mining town.

He doesn’t remember this fight either. He knows he was fighting the Avatar and Azula, and then Uncle was there and Zuko felt so _relieved._

The Avatar’s friends were there. Azula was cornered against the remains of a collapsing house.

Azula holds her hands up in what could be a passable attempt at surrendering for anyone else, but Zuko is from the Fire Nation. He knows raised hands mean battle. “A princess knows when she’s beaten.”

Azula smirks and Uncle screams as Azula’s lightning hits him.

The town’s on fire and Zuko can’t breathe through his fury.

Azula is gone.

Azula hurt Uncle.

Zuko feels like his lungs are collapsing.

Uncle’s still breathing ( _for now_ ), and Zuko has to bite down the urge to scream.

“Zuko, I can help.” The waterbender ( _Katara_ ) supplies.

He lashes out at them because that’s familiar to him. He wonders if this is it. If it all ends here, in a dried-out mining town.

If Uncle dies, then Zuko will die with him.

viii.

Lightning is just one more thing Azula can do that Zuko can’t. Uncle can do it. His father can do it. Azula can do it. He just can’t.

He doesn’t know why he runs to the mountain, sprints up the cliffs to stand and scream at the sky. He just wants to feel _something,_ and if the electric pulse takes him, so be it.

He knows his father would have shot lightning at him without question. He probably wouldn’t have even needed Zuko to _ask,_ would have deemed it a necessary test of whether Zuko had been paying attention.

But he thinks about what Uncle said, about the power in drawing wisdom from many different places.

_If we take wisdom from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale._

He knows what his father and Azula do with lightning. It’s cold. Detached. The opposite of natural firebending. They use it to hurt people. To kill people. Zuko doesn’t think he wants to be a part of that.

So he takes the ostrich horse and goes to the mountains, where lightning often strikes the tips.

_Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source._

He knows, objectively, that even if he can’t create his own lightning, that there is power in being able to redirect it. That still doesn’t ease the crushing sense of failure sitting on his chest.

He cries in the rain as thunder crackles around him. He cries for his mom. His cousin. The siblings he and Azula could have been. He cries for all the things he was never good enough at. He cries for the fact that he is unwelcomed everywhere in the world. He is a disgrace to the Fire Nation and a monster to everyone else.

He cries for himself, and the person he used to be.

vii.

A man in the backroom of a garden store tells them to head to Ba Sing Se. So they go.

Along the way, they meet a boy that’s around Zuko’s age. Jet offers Zuko a purpose and a family and a way to channel his frustrations to help people who are suffering. Zuko thinks about his offer for longer than he should. It’s risky. Lee and Sela are still fresh on his mind. And although Zuko doesn’t think he’d get caught, he doesn’t know the boy well enough to put any kind of confidence into it. So Zuko declines.

Uncle talks about Ba Sing Se like it’s the greatest city in the world. He speaks as if this is their opportunity to start over. Like it’s anything other than a glorified prison sentence. A continuation of their struggles in the Earth Kingdom. 

Uncle’s optimism makes Zuko angry, sometimes.

But Zuko knows Lu Ten is in Ba Sing Se. Zuko doesn’t buy into the spirits like Iroh, but even he recognizes that Lu Ten’s death was a catalyst for a lot of things – his mother’s disappearance, his grandfather’s death, his father’s rule, his uncle’s year-long absence before he returned to the palace, more at peace than anyone had ever seen him.

He knows that most would argue that Ba Sing Se is the site of the Fire Nation’s (and more specifically, Iroh’s) greatest military failure. But Zuko also knows that Lu Ten lived and died in the encampments. He was cremated on the battlefields outside the wall. His spirit lives there. Zuko can’t fault his uncle for wanting to be there.

Zuko loved his cousin in a way Ozai and Azula never could, and as much as he hates the thought of going to Ba Sing Se, he knows Uncle has sacrificed a lot ( _too much)_ for Zuko over the past three years. Uncle needs to go and Zuko won’t leave Uncle again. So they go.

A large part of Zuko still wants to go back to the Fire Nation, and that part of him isn’t very happy that they’ve completely given up their hunt for the Avatar. But from the moment the merchant at the garden store told them to go to Ba Sing Se, a certain lightness seemed to wash over his Uncle.

Zuko still doesn’t think they should go to Ba Sing Se. He wonders what that says about him.

vi.

Jet’s appearance at Pao’s tea shop triggers a wave of sharp paranoia in Zuko. Jet, who offered Zuko friendship and then tried to fight him once he realized they were firebenders. It was like Sela and Lee all over again, except worse. In Yeopo, it was easy to leave. He had no attachments and was just passing through.

They had so much more to lose in Ba Sing Se.

But he hadn’t seen Jet since he was arrested and he can’t figure out why he feels so guilty. He shouldn’t have fought Jet, not in Pao’s shop at least, but Jet was a serious threat to the fragile stability that he and Uncle had managed to create for themselves.

It doesn’t change the fact that Jet is one more person who has been punished because of Zuko’s actions.

After two weeks with no further appearances from Jet and no Dai Li agents knocking at their apartment door, Zuko, at Uncle’s behest, tries to relax a bit.

Zuko throws himself into their routine in Ba Sing Se. Their days go like this: they wake up and head over to the tea shop. Every third day, Zuko goes to a bakery in the middle ring to pick up more sweet cakes for the shop. More days than not, Zuko works the front while Uncle makes tea in the back. Despite Uncle’s best efforts to teach Zuko proper tea making techniques on the ship, Zuko had never quite managed to perfect some of the temperatures without firebending. At the end of the day, Zuko wipes down the tables and sweeps the floor as Uncle cleans up in the back. Then, the two of them walk back to the apartment together. Their apartment is a small, single room on the fourth floor of an apartment building. They only have a table and one bed that Zuko lets Uncle have more often than not.

It’s surprisingly peaceful. Zuko still thinks he wants more out of life than serving tea in the Lower Ring. Nevertheless, he still cherishes the feeling of belonging he gets at the tea shop.

The day before what would have been Lu Ten’s 24th birthday, Zuko goes on a date.

He’s not stupid, he’s _noticed_ the girl (Jin) has been coming into the tea shop. She always comes in around the same time (late afternoon), always orders the same thing (oolong and a moon cake, even though it’s not the right time of year for the dessert), and she smiles at Zuko in a way that makes him nervous. He was sure she knew he was Fire Nation.

In Zuko’s defense, he had never gone to a real school and he spent three years on a ship where there were three female crew members in a crew of 35 and the average age was 50. His only experience with girls was his sister and her friends, and he figured he was safer ignoring anything he may have learned from them.

They go on the date. Jin is nice. Zuko is an absolute disaster. He feels like everything he does is a mistake and a misstep, but Jin just giggles and looks at him with amusement. She doesn’t even seem mad that he lied about being part of a traveling circus.

But to her, he’s not banished, or a disgrace, or symbolic of the genocide his family committed. For a night, they’re just two people in Ba Sing Se having fun. No different from the people at the next table.

Jin grabs his hand to take him to her favorite place in the city. Zuko’s thankful firebenders can’t get sweaty palms.

Zuko’s not great at this whole “date” thing, but he sees the way Jin’s face falls when they come to the unlit Firelight Fountain. That’s why, despite the stupidity of firebending so openly in a public square, Zuko asks Jin to close her eyes and quickly shoots off a dozen tiny flames, illuminating the lanterns.

Jin’s face is filled with joy when she sees them.

She kisses him for it, and Zuko panics and thinks _you don’t know anything about me_ and leaves.

But when Uncle asks how the date went, Zuko says “it was nice” and surprises himself by realizing he means it.

The next morning, Uncle is already gone when Zuko wakes up. He had told Zuko he was taking the day off, and when Zuko asked if he wanted company, Iroh had just smiled at him sadly and said, “I’m sure you have a more exciting day ahead of you than spending time with your old uncle, nephew.”

When Zuko was younger, he used to make Iroh handmade gifts for his birthday. They were all terrible, little clay figurines or misshapen calligraphy.

His uncle, thankfully, had always been delighted with the gifts despite their questionable quality. Zuko stopped when his uncle went away and didn’t bother with it when he came back.

During the first year at sea, when Zuko was still trying not to panic every time he saw a flame, he had spent a lot of time working to compensate for his lost depth perception. On Uncle’s suggestion, he had taken up origami. In the Fire Nation, it was always customary to give the first product to the teacher, no matter how poor the quality. Zuko knew for a fact that Uncle had kept that first floating paper boat on the desk in his quarters from the day Zuko gave it to him until the day the ship exploded.

Zuko missed Lu Ten’s birthday the first year of his banishment because his burn was infected. Last year, Zuko knew he likely wouldn’t be able to find his Uncle all day. That was okay. Zuko had just left the palm-sized origami koi fish in his room. Uncle didn’t say anything specific, but Zuko did allow Uncle to hug him the next morning.

Zuko reaches for the top shelf in the cupboard to pull something out. He leaves the emerald green origami dragon that he had spent days meticulously folding in the backroom of the tea shop on Uncle’s bed for him to find whenever he came back.

Zuko heads down to the tea shop, where he’s sure he has another day of Pao who, despite his cluelessness, will undoubtedly try to micromanage Zuko in his Uncle’s absence.

The next day, Zuko catches a flyer depicting the Avatar’s lost bison (and how do you _lose_ a bison, anyways?) and he feels the world around him still.

v.

Zuko leans against the wall in their dark apartment. There’s a cup of jasmine tea in his hand. Dawn is a few hours away.

He woke up screaming from a nightmare a couple of minutes ago, his uncle’s hand on his shoulder whispering his name urgently.

But Uncle's words had been ringing constantly in his mind since they left the Dai Li headquarters.

_It’s time for you to look inward, and start asking yourself the big question: who are you and what do you want?_

Zuko stares out the window and looks at the moon. After Zuko’s initial sickness had worn off, he felt _decent_ for the first time in as long as he could remember. Like he could wake up tomorrow and actually believe Uncle when he says it’s going to be a good day.

"Uncle?" Zuko asks. His uncle looks over at him curiously from where he's washing out his teacup at the sink. Zuko looks out the window at the moon again. “Do you remember when you came back to the palace? I was 11. You asked me how it had happened, and I told you I fell while training.” Zuko swallowed. “That’s – that’s not entirely true. My father banned me from practicing with the dao when mom – when my mother left. And he caught me practicing again a few months later. My arm was broken in three places. The healer had to break it two more times to get it to heal correctly.”

Zuko can’t chance a look at his uncle, can’t bear to see the expression on his face. He looks down at his hands in his lap. “It was wrong of my father to burn me.” Zuko can barely hear himself speak. “I wasn’t – I wasn’t old enough to be fighting. I was a _child._ ” The last word rips itself from Zuko’s throat, and he wonders if this is what falling apart feels like.

Suddenly, Zuko is swept up in his uncle’s arms, and he feels like the small child he’s long since forgotten how to be.

Uncle hears the unspoken question lurking just below the surface. “Oh Zuko,” he says, holding him close. Zuko glances up at Uncle and is surprised to see tears in his eyes. “ _Yes_. It was horrifically wrong. You did nothing wrong and you did not deserve to be treated the way you were. There’s no honor in hurting a child.” Uncle rubs Zuko’s back, and he feels something within him crack.

Zuko turns into his uncle’s chest as a lifetime of sobs rips their way from his chest. 

iv.

Zuko betrays Uncle at the _chance_ of love from his father on the manipulative advice of his sister.

His father, who burned his face off and cast him aside the moment the opportunity presented itself. He betrayed Uncle for _him_.

He stands on the deck of the ship headed back to the Fire Nation and tries not to think about the last time he was on a ship like this. Jee, mad at him as usual, and Uncle begging Zuko to stop antagonizing the crew. He never thought he’d look back and think of those first years of banishment as _simple_ , but Zuko had finally gotten to a place where he felt okay and he fucked everything up in an instant.

Zuko breathes in the sea air, trying to calm down. They’re not far from the Fire Nation now.

He tries not to think about throwing himself overboard.

He doesn’t know what awaits him in the Fire Nation. He could be arrested and left to die in the basement of the Capital prison or be sent off to die in the coal mines. He stands on the hull of the ship headed towards the Fire Nation from when the sun goes down until he can feel Agni’s pull begin to drag across the horizon the next day. It used to bring him peace, during his years at sea.

Now it only burns.

iii.

Zuko returns to the Fire Nation despite a deep gut feeling telling him _this is a bad idea_ and is greeted as a hero.

They throw banquets and parties to _welcome him home_ as if he had spent the past three years on vacation in Ember Island and not fighting for his life and starving in the Earth Kingdom.

Everything in the Fire Nation is wrong. The palace is different than he remembers, probably because Ozai and Azula have been its primary occupants for the past 3 years. He can’t help but wonder if the staff had looked this scared when he was a child.

Everyone is so passionately in favor of the war and it makes Zuko want to scream _this is wrong, you haven’t met the people we’re hurting and I have and it’s all wrongwrongwrong-_

He doesn’t see his father for days after he comes home. Everything Iroh’s ever said about Ozai, about how he only works for himself, is at the forefront of Zuko’s mind.

When he finally sees his father, he learns Azula told Father that _he_ was the one who killed the Avatar. He confronts Azula and in the aftermath, he has a panic attack so severe that he passes out. He wakes up the next morning on the floor of his bedroom to find out it's almost sunrise. He was out for a good couple of hours. It’s the most he’s slept since he left Ba Sing Se.

Unconsciousness is as close as he can get to rest.

Zuko knows Azula is up to something. If Azula told their father that Zuko had been the one to kill the Avatar, then that’s only because she doesn’t believe he’s dead.

Zuko thinks about Katara’s spirit water and knows with a sinking feeling that the Avatar is alive.

When it comes out that the Avatar is alive, the point of blame for his father’s anger will, unquestionably, be Zuko.

Zuko can’t do that again.

So Zuko starts avoiding people. He’s never been the most social, and it starts almost unconsciously. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it, but he’s practiced at avoiding Azula and his father from those brutal years after his mother’s disappearance. It’s not too difficult to start avoiding everyone else.

He can tell Mai knows something is up. She can sense his growing anxiety, and she knows he’s avoiding her just like he’s avoiding everyone else.

It’s incredibly shitty of him, but he knows he’s about to lose everything he’s been yearning for since he was 13. He wonders if his father will have him executed in front of an audience for his failures. Like the Agni Kai, but successful this time.

Zuko can’t focus on anything, because all of his thoughts are consumed by worry about what’s going to happen. He can’t rest, because he’s worried Azula or his father will have someone slit his throat while he sleeps. He can’t sit still. He throws his energy into training, practices his firebending and his dao until his entire body is screaming and relishes the feeling of something besides blinding panic.

The panic always returns.

His father doesn’t seem to care about the swords now, and the phantom pain from his broken arm that never quite healed correctly makes his anxiety skyrocket.

Mai corners him one day when he’s in the palace. “What’s up with you?”

Zuko’s eyebrow shoots up. “What’s up with me?”

“Yes. You’re acting weird. You’ve been avoiding everyone for weeks. You’re jumpy and distracted. You look terrible. Do you even sleep?”

Zuko looks away and crosses his arms unconsciously over his chest. “I have a lot on my mind. Sorry.”

Mai reaches out and cupped the side of his face with her hand. “I only ask because I’m _worried_ about you, idiot.”

Zuko glances back at her. “Can I ask you a question? If you had something that was stressing you out, something that would have very bad consequences if people found out, what would you do?”

Mai’s eyebrows furrows ever so slightly. She takes a step back to look at him. Pauses for a moment. Zuko wonders if Mai knows. “I think if the issue is other people finding out, then I would do whatever it took to ensure that people didn’t find out. Take care of the situation before anyone realizes there’s a problem in the first place.” She stared at him again. “Anything in particular?”

“No!’ Zuko says and winces. “It’s nothing. It’s – it’s weird, being back after so long. That’s it.”

Mai hums. “Come on,” she says after a moment. “Let’s go get dinner. Go on a walk or something. Watch the sunset. I meant what I said – you _do_ look terrible.”

As the two of them head off towards the kitchen, Zuko turns Mai’s words over again in his mind. _Handle the situation before people realize there’s a problem._

Suddenly, he remembers hearing rumors in the eastern Earth Kingdom about a firebending bounty hunter who was known for his quick rise to infamy through a series of deadly Agni Kais and his spotless kill list.

The solution to his problem. All he has to do is find him.

After he and Mai part ways that night, Zuko heads to a tavern on the outskirts of the city. He met a lot of people at sea, and he still has contacts in the Caldera. He leaves with a slip of paper and instructions to go to an alley near a construction site at midnight the next day.

Maybe if the Avatar is dead, Zuko will be able to sleep without feeling like an anchor is sitting on his chest.

ii.

“ _I’m angry at myself!”_

Zuko has everything he’s ever wanted, and he’s _still_ not happy.

He’s back home. He has his honor, his father’s love, _whatever_ it is from Azula, a girlfriend that loves him, and he’s still _miserable._

He’s fucked everything up, it’s all his fault, he’s ruined everything good in his life once again, and there’s nothing he can do to get any of it back.

He’s so damn angry, and it’s not until he suddenly screaming at the beach that he realizes that he’s angry at _himself_ , and thinks that it was a mistake to go to the Earth King’s palace to serve tea on that day.

They should have just stayed in their shitty apartment.

i.

After Iroh reveals Roku was his mother’s grandfather, Zuko goes on a walk.

The undercurrent of anxiety that Zuko had been feeling since realizing the Avatar was alive had quieted in the wake of Iroh’s revelation. Almost like the shock had caused Zuko to check out completely.

So Zuko walks. Not anywhere near the palace. Long before Sozin’s time, when the Fire Sages were the keepers of the Fire Nation, they had carved a path along the rim of the volcano for certain rituals and festivals. The path is hard to access, but Lu Ten had shown him once, right before he left. The whole trail has been abandoned in the centuries since and is only blocked off by a high wooden fence. Zuko had only gone one other time, right after his mother left.

It’s far, but Zuko has nowhere to be and nothing but time.

Once he reaches the access point, he throws off his thicker outer robe and leaves it on the ground. He’ll grab it on the way back. He walks to the section of fencing Lu Ten had shown him all those years ago. He pushes on a loose slot of the wooden fence and slips in.

It’s another long hike up the side of the volcano to the rim. It had been early afternoon when he had gone to visit Iroh and now it was comfortably early evening, the summer sun still an hour away from setting.

The sun was still burning bright by the time he made it to the rim’s trail. He walked until he found the flattest rock he could and sat down on it, facing towards the sun and the sea, his back turned to the Capital. 

He lets out the breath he feels like he’s been holding since he first set foot back in the Fire Nation. He does something he hasn’t done since before Ba Sing Se and pulls his legs into a lotus position.

With his fist and palm pressed together, he creates the tiniest of flames and meditates.

The meditation allows him to focus his mind and focus on his breathing. He can feel the sun’s rays warming his face. He can hear the cicadabugs chirping in the foliage surrounding the volcano’s rim. He can feel his pulse and the beating heart of the sun’s life force.

He thinks about Iroh’s words. About Sozin’s words.

Sozin wanted the world and killed his best friend in a fit of jealousy to do it. He was so embittered by what he saw as Roku’s betrayal he left him to die and extinguished the Air Nomads. He wasted his life searching for an Avatar that wouldn’t appear until six months ago.

Sozin was convinced that he had killed every airbender but the Avatar on the word of a Fire Sage. Zuko realizes with sudden clarity that that’s why Azulon had ordered the raids on the Water Tribes.

Azulon had decimated the Southern Water Tribe in the name of his father’s quest. Taking air and water effectively out of the Avatar cycle. That only left earth and fire. 

Zuko feels more and more distant from his family with every passing day. He didn’t belong outside the Fire Nation and he doesn’t belong here with his father and sister. He’s seen the bodies at the Air Temples, both Fire Nation and Air Nomad. He can’t fathom how Sozin just left them there for a century, decaying until they were nothing more than bones with fabric covering them until Zuko and Iroh burned them and sent their ashes back into the wind.

(He thinks maybe he did belong with Uncle in Ba Sing Se, that one day at the Jasmine Dragon, but as surely as he feels emotion prick at the back of his eye, he pushes it down and focuses on his breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Until the flame in his palm is steady once more).

And then there’s Avatar Roku.

His mother never really spoke about her life before she came to live in the Capital. He didn’t know anything about where she had come from. Zuko knew her parents were older, and had died before he was born. She didn’t have any siblings. He thinks his mother had mentioned that her mother was an herbalist, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t expecting to hear that Avatar Roku was his mother’s grandfather.

But Zuko knows better than most that memories are subjective. That time and tone and nostalgia can conflate even the clearest cut of memories. He can’t help but wonder if Sozin and Roku’s friendship was as golden as the former wanted it to seem.

Sozin though he was justified in his actions. Roku didn’t think Sozin would go as far as he did and didn’t stop him when it mattered.

_Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world._

Zuko opens his eyes and pulls the hairpiece out of the pocket of his robe. He turns the metal ornament over in his hands in the setting sun before returning it to his robe.

He thinks about the Avatar in the forest. He’s younger now than Zuko was when he was banished. Zuko had thought then that he broke him out of prison so Zuko could claim the Avatar as his own. He’s less sure, now.

Zuko’s not stupid. He knows the Avatar wants to end the war, and the only way to end the war is to kill the Fire Lord and anyone that is a threat. If he hopes to be successful, it has to happen before the comet. If the Avatar expects to fight his father, then he needs to know firebending.

_Born in you is the power to restore balance to the world._

Zuko wonders, just for a moment, what it would be like to help the Avatar. To teach him the little firebending that Zuko knows. 

To help him defeat the Fire Lord to save the other nations. For him to betray his nation again to save the world.

He stares out over the rim of the caldera as the sun dips below the horizon and the moon rises higher in the sky.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

0.

Zuko is 16 when his father calls on him in a war meeting. The action in itself makes Zuko’s heart beat so loudly he can hear it in his ears. His robes feel too tight, and he has to measure his words to make sure they don’t betray the stress.

He’s sitting at his father’s right hand. He wonders if this is because he’s trying to send a message to the council about Zuko acting as Ozai’s second, or if he does it to see Zuko’s scar, a permanent reminder of Zuko’s last war meeting.

 _This is everything you’ve wanted for since you were 11,_ he has to forcibly remind himself even though he’s fighting the urge to sprint from the room before his father can burn him again.

Azula shares her plan for decimating the Earth Kingdom and the generals _applaud._

Every atom in Zuko’s body is screaming that this is wrong, but he’s frozen to the spot. 

Lee. Jin. Song. All of them. Burned down with the comet.

He sees a scene, not too different from this one, of a younger boy standing up in defense of the 41st Division, and having half his face burned off in front a crowd and then being left to die on the marble floor.

He has to forcibly shove down the instinct to stand and say _this is wrong_ and thinks _Mother, Uncle, forgive me._

Mai is waiting for him outside the council meeting.

He stares up at a portrait of his father and swallows down bile.

They go back to Mai’s house. Zuko immediately excuses himself and throws up in the basin of Mai’s bathroom. It’s not pretty - full-body heaving until there’s nothing left. Tears are running down his face. Zuko collapses on the floor and tries to breathe.

Zuko doesn’t know how long he spends lying on the floor of Mai’s bathroom, but it’s long enough for Mai to come looking for him. Her eyes widen ever so slightly in shock as she takes in the scene.

She bends down and wipes the hair off of Zuko’s sweat-drenched forehead. “Are you okay?”

Zuko stares at her. “Did you know?”

Mai stares back at him blankly.

“Did you know?” He repeats. He has to know. “About Azula’s plan. To use the comet to burn down the Earth Kingdom.”

Mai inhales sharply. She’s still crouched on the floor next to Zuko. “She… mentioned it in Ba Sing Se. We didn’t think she was serious.”

Zuko laughs humorlessly. “Oh, she’s serious. This is bad. This can’t happen.” 

Mai’s expression is unreadable, but her hand moves to the sleeve of her robe in a way that betrays her nervousness. “Zuko … you said yourself at the beach that you weren’t so sure how to tell right from wrong anymore.”

“I know,” Zuko says. “But they’re _people,_ Mai. Just like the Fire Nation. They’re families and kids. Why are their lives inherently less valuable? Why do they matter less because of where they come from? I’ve lived with them and I’ve fought them and _nothing_ is lacking about them. And I _wanted_ to say something during the war meeting, to tell Azula and my father and those stupid generals just how wrong they are, but -” _you know what happened last time_ goes unsaid. Zuko takes a deep breath. “My father told me once that whatever the Fire Lord chooses is right. But this isn’t. This is _wrong._ My father’s barely ever left the capital. I _starved_ on the plains of the Earth Kingdom. I’ve seen the damage the Fire Nation has done there. I’ve been to the ravaged towns and the burned down villages. I’ve seen the terror the Fire Nation has already inflicted there. I’ve seen the kindness the Earth Kingdomers give strangers, the kindness they gave _me,_ and I was their enemy. I’ve been saved, by the people of the Earth Kingdom and the Avatar and his friends from the Water Tribe more times than I could count. I owe them everything. And Azula wants them _obliterated_. _”_

Mai stares at Zuko and cups his face with both hands. “Hey. Listen.” She bores her eyes into Zuko’s. “You’re right. But you have to be careful. You’ve been gone for a long time. Things are different now. If you tell Azula or the Fire Lord this, they’ll kill you.”

Zuko snorts. “My father burned half my face off for _talking out of turn_ because he wanted to murder troops that were the age we are now. I’ve always known I wasn’t making it out of the war.” Zuko knows Mai is right and that he needs to be careful. He knows instinctively that Azula and Father will likely start making moved to have Zuko out of the way by the time the comet comes. He can’t stop the words from spilling out of him. “Avatar Roku was my mother’s grandfather. Roku and Sozin were best friends. Roku didn’t say anything to Sozin until it was too late. Sozin left him to die and obliterated the Air Nomads because he was _jealous_.”

“What do you mean you’ve always known you’re not surviving the war? And how do you know that’s what’s happening- “

Zuko’s breath is coming quickly now. “I’ve seen the bodies in the Air Temples. Hundreds of Fire Nation soldiers. _Thousands_ of Air Nomads. I burned their bodies and I scattered their ashes. Everything we’ve ever been taught about them is wrong. The Air Nomads didn’t have an army. They were peaceful. And Sozin committed genocide because he was power-hungry and jealous. It can’t happen again. _Someone_ has to stop them."

Zuko stands up abruptly, the sudden gesture making his head spin. Mai reaches a hand out to steady him.

“I have to go. I’m sorry.” Zuko says. He thinks Mai calls after him, but he’s already gone.

He rushes until he’s back in his room at the palace, and he lies on the floor of in the dark.

It reminds him of the ship.

Here is what Zuko understands:

Love should not be conditional.

His father was wrong to burn him and banish him.

Azula’s plan to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground must be stopped at all costs.

The war must end, and it must end with peace.

If Zuko does nothing, he is no better than every single person who paved the way for Sozin to massacre the Air Nomads.

Zuko knows that he cannot stay.

Except, no. It’s not that he _can’t_ stay. It’s that he _won’t._

He won’t be an accessory to another genocide. He won’t be a pawn in his father’s game. He won’t sit and _do nothing_ any longer.

He’s spent enough time spreading the fear and hate that the Fire Nation champions so proudly.

He can’t change the mistakes he’s made in the past. But maybe he can help change the war’s outcome.

Zuko sits up abruptly, and the force of it burns his sides. He grabs the edge of his bed and pulls himself upwards.

He knows the Avatar is alive. He knows the eclipse is tomorrow. He knows he fucked up in Ba Sing Se, and there is every possibility that the Avatar and his friends won't give him another chance. He knows he wouldn’t. 

The Avatar can’t win if he doesn’t know firebending, and he can’t learn firebending if there is no one to teach him. They might kill him, but they also might let Zuko help them.

He might die if he leaves, but he’s dead for certain if he stays.

And just like that, Zuko’s decision is made. He will break his uncle out of prison and leave the Fire Nation to go join the Avatar tomorrow.

Zuko has spent every day of his life disappointing the only people that have ever cared about him.

Maybe, just this once, he can make it right.

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings Explained:  
> xxv. Attempted drowning - Azula attempts to drown Zuko when they're children by pushing Zuko down in the ocean and standing on his chest  
> xxii. Child Abuse - It's mentioned that Zuko receives burns/bruises from his instructors for poor performance. Additionally, Ozai breaks Zuko's arm for disobeying orders when he is 13.  
> xxi. Intrusive Thoughts / Suicidal Ideation - Zuko has intrusive thoughts/suicidal feelings after the Agni Kai  
> xx. Death of an Infant - At the western air temple, Zuko sees the skeleton of an infant  
> xix. Intrusive Thoughts / Suicidal Ideation - Zuko's burn gets infected and Zuko begs Agni to let him die  
> xii. Intrusive Thoughts / Suicidal Ideation - Zuko has an intrusive thought after Zhao doesn't take his hand at the North Pole  
> xi. Gaslighting (kind of) - Zuko, as a product of his upbringing, thinks he deserves his scar  
> iv. - Intrusive Thoughts / Suicidal Ideation - Line about Zuko wanting to throw himself overboard  
> (I would rather over-warn than under-warn) 
> 
> Woo, thank you so much if you've made it this far! This fic was almost entirely written to Doom Days by Bastille, reputation by Taylor Swift, and the Spirited Away soundtrack. Massive, massive edits for this were done while listening to folklore by Taylor Swift. 
> 
> Also, I used to be imaginaryturtles on here but I finally changed it to match my tumblr, which has been frutescence since I was in the 9th grade (for time reference, I graduated college last month)
> 
> I started this fic back in February in what was obviously a very different time. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Sending lots of love to everyone ❤️
> 
> find me on tumblr, where I'll be thinking about zuko and also dumping the sections that didn't make the final cut: https://frutescence.tumblr.com


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